Aftermath
by Liv Wilder
Summary: Post series finale fic. "Do you know how long it's been since I let anyone in, Jack? Do you? Into my home...my bed?" she finished quietly, spent like a match from the effort of confronting him like this. "I'm guessing a while," he finally replied, dragging his gaze up from the comforter to look her in the eye. "And I'm honored, believe me."
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: This is my first, and possibly only, story for Stalker. As you'll see if you look at my profile, I usually write fanfiction for the ABC show Castle. But I really fell in love with Stalker and was so disappointed to see it end before more character development could take place and interpersonal relationships could be given time to flourish. I admired each case of the week for the fear factor the writers and director managed to inject into each episode and for how realistically sinister they managed to make them. It was like a mini-movie every week, and I'm sure there was much more storytelling mileage to be had from this real life subject matter. If SVU can manage 17 seasons and counting, CBS could have given us at least one more of Stalker._

 _Anyway, as a result of the show's, in my view, premature cancellation, I felt the need to write a little "closure" for myself. I hope maybe it can help some other loyal viewers of the show too. Liv_

* * *

 _Jack: "I felt like I was talking advantage of the moment or something, and I wanted to apologize if I crossed the line. Did I cross the line?"_

 _Beth: "I kissed you too, Jack. It goes both ways."_

 ** _Stalker:_** _Ep._ _1x20 "Love Kills"_

* * *

 _ **Aftermath**_

 _ **Chapter 1**_

Beth rolled over in bed to lie on her side. It was dark outside but she needed to see him by what little ambient light remained, to see that high brow, prominent, strong nose, the dusky shadow of his beard beginning to come in all along his jawline, a thick head of dark hair, now messy with her own finger tracks, providing a sharp contrast against her creamy-beige pillows.

"What are you thinking, Jack?" she asked, just looking at him for a few interconnected moments enough time to tell her that he wasn't asleep as he might appear to the untrained eye.

His eyes popped open and he turned to look at her, squinting a little when the light from a lamp burning out in her hallway cut a laser like swathe across his face. "Hmm?" he hummed, pillowing his massive arms behind his head, biceps bunching appealingly within Beth's line of sight.

"I said what are you thinking?" she repeated, despite knowing that he had heard her the first time and was merely stalling for an answer.

"Thinking," he mused, rubbing his chin in the exaggerated manner of a pondering professor, driving her a little crazy in the process with his deliberate refusal to give up his thoughts.

Beth poked his side, right in the middle of his exposed ribcage, making him laugh in surprised delight and then squirm away from her marauding finger. "Come on. I know you. What's going on in that head of yours?" she asked, adding, "Penny for them?" with a jab of her finely pointed chin in his direction.

Everything about Beth Davis was fine: from the top of her head to the tip of her red painted toes her body was birdlike, belying a strength Jack Larsen had come to appreciate firsthand over the short time he had known her, ever since he'd moved to L.A. to join the Threat Assessment Unit a mere few months ago, following his ex and the son he didn't yet know clear across the country from New York, fleeing his own dented past. Her long black hair added a feminine softness that complimented the delicate, Vietnamese-American exoticism of her features. Her limbs were so slender, her frame almost painfully slight, and yet she could take down a man many times her size with devastating efficiency, control and relative ease. She was a powerhouse who could pass herself off as fragile and graceful as a geisha should she need to – a true chameleon.

And she had fascinated Jack Larsen from the first day he had laid eyes on her.

"Honestly?" he asked, rolling over onto his side to face her.

"I usually find that's best," Beth replied with trademark dryness, smirky amusement playing at her lips and dancing in her eyes.

"I was wondering what happens now?"

Beth smiled, slowly, her body still tingling with the aftershocks of their lovemaking. "You mean... _now-now?_ " she asked, letting her hair fall forward over half her face as she leaned in to brush her smiling lips over his, her fingers settling on his naked hip and squeezing the jut of bone she found there. "Like...right now?" she whispered playfully around a second delicate kiss.

Jack kissed her back, a shock of something good and giddy shooting through him at finding himself in his boss's bed. He had expressed his hope to be a part of her uncertain future a couple of nights ago, he had kissed her...and then he had run away, as Beth herself had teased him the very next day. In the intervening hours, try as he might, they had been unable to find the right time to talk about how things might go from there, what would happen next, if she wanted to kill him for kissing her in the first place.

But Beth had surprised him again. "I kissed you too, Jack," she had reminded him at work with more flirtatious charm than he had ever seen her display before. In the couple of days since he'd taken a chance and opened himself up in her kitchen, over a bottle of beer, to a rebuff at the very least, maybe a broken arm or, at worst, getting himself fired from T.A.U. - this was his boss he was pursuing after all - she had surprised him with her calm, much more open demeanor, and by her willingness to talk instead of brushing their one moment off as just a moment.

God knows she had enough reasons to avoid men right now, especially any man who wanted inside her carefully controlled and monitored private life. After Perry and Ray, who could blame her for running a mile from any kind of relationship that involved trusting the opposite sex ever again. But surprise him she had with her willingness to try and a need that seemed to match his own.

"No, I mean what happens with you? Will you remain Beth Davis from now on? And if you do, what happens to Michelle Webber?"

Beth let her hand slide off Jack's hip and then she sat up in bed, pulling the sheet with her to cover her bare chest. She tucked it around her, more for warmth than modesty, as she drew up her knees, tenting them beneath the covers, unconsciously curling up small.

"What makes you ask that?" she frowned, her tone suddenly a little defensive, a little off.

"I guess it's been on my mind for a while now. Hearing Ray call you Michelle out in those woods, it made me wonder what-"

"Ray is dead, Jack."

Silence descended between them like a heavy curtain.

Jack took a moment, and then battled on, sweeping any barriers aside as he went. "I know he is. I was there," he reminded her gruffly, the memories of that night - of finding her in the woods, cowering and terrified, of the armed stand-off with her crazed, psychopathic ex-boyfriend, of the fire - all still too fresh and too real.

"Michelle is dead too."

"Are you sure about that?" he asked, aching to touch her, to reassure her that he meant no harm by asking these questions, that he only wanted to help.

"Why all the questions? And what do you want with Michelle? You only know me as Beth."

"You talk about Michelle like she's this whole other person."

"Because she was, Jack. And now she's gone."

"Did...did you really change that much? I...I mean...would people who knew you back then still recognize you?"

"I was fresh out of college when I left my old life...after-"

"After the fire?" Jack prompted.

Beth nodded and dropped her head to look down at her hands which were twisting in the sheets. "Yeah. But we all change at that age, start to discover our potential...who we might become."

"Yes, but you changed _everything._ Your name, where you lived...you had no family, Beth, and I'm guessing you left friends behind too. You joined the L.A.P.D.. That's big, that's-"

"I lived this, Jack. I don't need reminders of what I went through...the lengths, the changes...the loss."

She eased herself out from under the covers and turned her back on him, swinging her legs over the side of the bed, grounding her feet on the floor. But she didn't run any further, which was the main thing, for both of them.

Jack reached out to touch her this time, laying his hand flat in the middle of her back, fingers splayed right between her narrow shoulder blades. He brushed his thumb over the vertebrae of her spine, her skin so smooth, strumming her body into relaxing. "Hey, I'm sorry. Look, I didn't mean to upset you."

Beth let out a slow breath, twisting to look back over her shoulder at him. "Then why are you pushing this...digging so hard? And _now_...of all times?" she pointed out, waving her hand listlessly towards the unmade bed and the two naked individuals within.

Jack slid his hand from her back up and over her shoulder and then he gently tugged to get her to turn round. To his surprise she came willingly, curling her knees to one side on the mattress beside him and positioning herself so she could see him once more. She grabbed a pillow and hauled it across her lap and chest, hugging it to her. It was another defensive move, but a forgivable one given how new this thing was between them and how open she was being so far while he probed her painful past for God knows what reason.

"I want to know you," Jack explained quietly, earnestly. "I want to know who you were back then. Good bits you hid away or let go, Beth, because you felt you had to. The tiny pieces of yourself you left behind. And I want you to be able to be whole again, now the threat hanging over you these last twelve years is gone."

Beth blinked at him, gnawing on her lip before she answered. "You want to know me?" she challenged, her voice rising, her chest heaving a little with the effort of suppressing a sudden rush of anger and anxiety at what he was asking of her - to let her old life back in, to let her defences down, to open herself up to the world of painful memories she had boxed up twelve years ago and hidden away on a high shelf at the back of her closet.

"Do you know how long it's been since I let anyone in, Jack? _Do you?_ Into my home...my bed?" she finished quietly, spent like a match from the effort of confronting him like this. A man she trusted, who she instinctively knew cared for her already.

"I'm guessing a while," he finally replied, dragging his gaze up from the comforter to look her in the eye. "And I'm honored, believe me."

"Don't be. I'm not worth it," she snapped, almost bitterly, recoiling.

Jack immediately reached out for her wrist, wrapping his fingers around it to get her attention and hold her near. " _What?_ How can you say that?"

"I have issues, Jack. Enough for the whole team at T.A.U. and then some."

"We all have issues. Or have you forgotten my ex and the little bout of stalking I engaged in when I first arrived in L.A.?"

"That's different. You had a son. You wanted to know him, to protect him."

"So you're complicated," he conceded for argument's sake. "Not like I didn't know that when I came over here tonight."

Beth allowed herself a wry little grunt of a laugh. One thing she'd learned about Jack Larsen was that he could make her smile, even at the bleakest of moments.

 _TBC..._

* * *

 _A/N: Love to hear your thoughts and if you'd like to see this continue. I'm kind of enjoying writing someone new for a change, so I might just carry on for my own amusement regardless. And if you're reading "Make Me Care" or "Risking It All", I've not given up on either story, don't worry. Life is just very busy right now. Liv xx_


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: I'm glad at least a few people feel about this show how I felt. Thanks so much for reading.

* * *

 _"I'm afraid of people really knowing me." - Lieutenant Beth Davis, Stalker_

* * *

 _Previously..._

 _"I have issues, Jack. Enough for the whole team at T.A.U. and then some."_

 _"We all have issues. Or have you forgotten my ex and the little bout of stalking I engaged in when I first arrived in L.A.?"_

 _"That's different. You had a son. You wanted to know him, to protect him."_

 _"So you're complicated," he conceded for argument's sake. "Not like I didn't know that when I came over here tonight."_

 _Beth allowed herself a wry little grunt of a laugh. One thing she'd learned about Jack Larsen was that he could make her smile, even at the bleakest of moments._

* * *

 _ **Chapter 2**_

Beth sighed and then she reached over the little hypoallergenic wall she'd constructed between them using her pillow and she rubbed Jack's arm.

"I'm pretty whole now, Jack. What you see is what you get. I'm not hiding anything from you, I promise."

He looked up from studying her long, fine-boned fingers, which were currently toying with the dark hairs on his arm, sifting through them like the wind passing through blades of meadow grass. He had a doubtful expression on his face. "Is that true?"

Beth nodded. "You have my word. You've seen my messy past. A little too up close and personal."

"And you've seen mine."

Beth swatted his arm and laughed. "I've met Amanda. That's _all_ of your past I've seen. And she's pretty kick-ass, Jack."

"Tell me about it," he grumbled, remembering Amanda's inflexible attitude towards him when he arrived in town a few months ago.

"Hey, she gave you your marching orders and then she still let you stay in L.A.. That's pretty awesome. What's more awesome is that you get to spend time with your son. Believe me, not many women would be willing to give up that much control unless they trust a guy. Amanda came round pretty fast."

Jack shrugged, but then he brightened, his face breaking into a smile so bright it was like the moon sailing out from behind a cloud. "Ethan is pretty amazing."

Beth couldn't help but smile back at him. "Of course he is. Dad like you, how could he not be?" she teased, poking his bare thigh with her toes. "Maybe one day I'll get to meet him." She smiled shyly as she said this, almost fishing for an invite while not wanting to push.

"I have him this weekend," Jack immediately informed her, his expression oh so eager. "Too soon?" he asked, eyebrows shooting skywards to accompany the spur of the moment suggestion.

Beth ducked her head shyly, smiling to herself at his enthusiasm, and then she slowly raised her eyes to look at him. "Why don't you check with Amanda? She might not want Ethan to get confused…or something," Beth frowned, breaking into nervous laughter along with Jack.

"We're really new at this," Jack grinned, reaching out to tuck a long swathe of jet-black hair behind Beth's ear. The gesture was uncommonly tender for the fledgling relationship they'd developed up to this point, the weighting of history still favoring that of boss-colleague, despite them having slept together once already tonight.

"Yes. That we are," she agreed, her eyes sparkling with mirth, her cheeks stained a little pink by a sudden bout of bashfulness.

"So…" Jack cleared his throat, attempting to break the awkwardness of the moment.

Beth looked eager to accept any lifeline he might be offering. "Yeah?"

"I have more questions."

"I see." She instantly sounded wary, a little guarded once more.

"If that's okay with you?"

"Might depend on the questions."

"Okay, how about if I toss them out there and you answer or pass depending."

"Depending on what?"

"On whether or not you want to answer."

Beth paused and thought for a moment, weighing her options. " _Okaaayyyy,_ shoot," she decided to trust him.

Jack took a deep breath. "Do you want me to go home now?"

Beth lowered her hands from where she had them clasped over her nose and mouth in anticipation of his inquisitive onslaught and she burst out laughing. " _That's_ your first question? Should you _leave?_ "

"What? I was being _courteous_ ," Jack insisted, grinning at Beth's sudden bout of amusement at his expense.

"You do realize you might shut down this entire interrogation of yours in one move if I say yes? Rookie mistake, Jack," she chided playfully, slowly shaking her head at him.

"Oh…oh, right." Jack rubbed the back of his neck in discomfort. "I didn't think of that. Can I ask another one first?"

"Just tell me the next question," Beth smiled indulgently, quietly adding, "And, no, I don't want you to go home tonight."

Jack looked openly surprised to hear this. He never expected to get to stay over the first time. Truth be told, he actually only came here to talk tonight, maybe make out a little if he was really lucky. Ending up in Beth's bed at all seemed like a miracle, staying there overnight went above and beyond.

"What? You didn't wanna stay?" she clarified, misreading the look of disbelief on his face for something else.

"No. No…I would love to stay. I just assumed you'd want space…or something."

"Maybe I like to cuddle. You ever think of that?" she teased, lifting one bare shoulder and tilting her head adorably as she smiled at him.

Jack was finding it harder and harder to tell when she was toying with him ever since the other night, since her barriers had come down around him and she'd become emboldened about what she wanted from life and from him in particular.

"Beth Davis, a cuddler? No way. I don't believe you."

She leaned over to kiss him, crushing the pillow between them. "Guess we'll find out," she whispered, drawing him into an even deeper embrace.

* * *

Jack moaned, and his list of questions was temporarily forgotten when his brain blanked out with the sweep of Beth's velvet soft tongue against his lips. He yanked the pillow out from between their bodies and tossed it across the bed causing them to fall into one another and roll across the bed. Beth laughed at his impatient drive to be rid of the barrier between them, and then she sighed a happy sigh when he touched her, so gently, suddenly groaning in delight when her limbs became tangled in her new lover's limbs and his heated skin slid over her own as he stretched out to his full height and pinned her beneath him.

"You are _so_ worth it, just so you know," Jack confessed into the flushed skin of her neck as she arched under him when he parted her thighs with his knees and prepared to slide inside her.

Beth shivered in his arms, her body light as a feather as he held her against him, rocking slowly together, both gliding on that infinitesimally fine line of teetering arousal; the razor-thin boundary between heightened pleasure and shattering oblivion. He'd been on a high these past two days after discovering that she wasn't going to turn him down after he'd shown up at her door unexpectedly the other night, begged a beer and stolen a kiss. Beth Davis, who was so private, so walled off when he'd arrived at T.A.U. Beth who had been openly dismissive, verging on hostile, when he'd joined her team. And now? Now this. She was moving beneath him, working with him, opening herself up to him in ways he could only have dreamed of, and he had, never imagining that those dreams would ever come true, let alone so soon.

He watched, so fascinated by her, as a frown began to crease her smooth forehead. He felt her fingers scrabbling at the flexing muscles of his back, her short nails a little sharp suddenly, and he assumed she was close, since this was only their second time and they were still learning each other's tells. But then she raised her long, dark lashes to look up at him, her expression so open and trusting, her dark eyes bottomless whirlpools of emotion. "Talk to me?" she begged, a flicker of fear passing across her field of vision as she studied his face, that fear growing more insistent with each thundering heartbeat.

When her nails broke skin she had more than his full attention. Fear shot up his spine at the horrified look on her face, the terror in her eyes. It was as if Beth wasn't really with him anymore. He certainly didn't recognize the childlike, trembling woman beneath him. In fact, he began to wonder, with a creeping sense of awareness, if Beth had gone completely, only to be replaced by a traumatized Michelle.

"Hey," Jack murmured, urgency in his tone, slowing the erotic, rhythmic undulation of his hips to stroke her face, to brush his hand over the back of her head. "Hey, Beth, look at me," he cajoled, waiting until her eyes alighted on his own again and the fog of fear coalesced into something marginally calmer, a jolt of recognition, and then slowly began to dissipate. "It's me…Jack. You're safe. We can stop anytime you want. Any time," he murmured against her hair.

* * *

Later, as Beth lay curled on her side with her back to him, he sat upright in her bed, a pillow over his lap, unfulfilled arousal leaving his body jumpy as a livewire, though any frustration he felt was utterly swamped and superseded by his concern for the silent woman beside him.

"How did you know?" she asked in a broken whisper, finally turning her head to look up at him when he failed to answer her question immediately.

Her hair whispered across the pillow as she moved, and Jack shrugged and shook his head, trying to brush the incident off as nothing.

"Jack look at me. How did you know?" she pressed, wrapping the sheet around her thin frame and forcing herself upwards to lean back against the headboard beside him.

"I've seen this kind of thing before…"

"You've seen—"

"Well…encountered…read about it," he shrugged noncommittally, leaving her unsure if this was some kind of professional experience he spoke from or something more personal. "It's a dissociative behavior. Sometimes happens after trauma. You broke from reality for a moment, that's all. But you knew it was happening, Beth. That's why you asked me to talk to you. You needed to know it was me and not—"

Jack pulled up short without finishing his thought. So Beth finished it for him.

"Ray," she breathed, her forehead knitting itself into a frustrated frown as she looked away from him in shame.

"Look, it shouldn't last long. You will get over this, Beth. _We_ will. I can help you."

"Oh, yeah, great. We have sex and the very first night I'm…I'm… _what?_ Having nightmares in the middle of it? I couldn't just wait until we fell asleep, have you rescue me from a bad dream like a normal person? Oh, no, I have to dissociate or whatever right in the middle of—"

"It's not that bad. And you're no damsel in distress, Beth. You don't need rescuing. By me or by anyone else."

"Then what _do_ I need, Jack? Because _you_ sure as hell don't need… _this!_ " she finished with a burst of frustration, waving her hand between them.

"Hey?" he said softly, reaching for her wrist when she tried to turn away from him, to hide her mortification at displaying this level of weakness. "What I _want_ is you. What I _need_ is for you to take a breath right now. Where do you keep your herbal tea?"

Beth shook her head in confusion. " _Tea?_ "

"In the kitchen, I assume. But which cabinet? I'm making us some tea, and then we can talk. But only if you want to. No pressure."

* * *

Jack returned several minutes later with two mugs of chamomile tea dosed with honey and lemon. He found Beth curled up in bed wearing his black undershirt from earlier that day. She looked small and vulnerable, swamped by his t-shirt, and so adorable that he had to remind himself not to coddle her, not to parent her and _definitely_ not to psychoanalyze her.

"Has that ever happened before?" he asked, after they were settled, the sweet citrusy scent of the herbal tea rising above them.

Beth kept her eyes trained on the rim of her mug. She felt self-conscious despite wholly trusting Jack not to hurt her. "You mean with someone else?"

"Yes. I'm not prying just…"

"There hasn't really been…anyone," she admitted quietly, reaching up to nervously toy with her hair. "Not in a long time," she added, her cheeks burning.

"How long were you with him?"

No one wanted to mention Ray's name, and by now neither of them needed to. Their understanding of the problem was clear and shared.

"A couple of years actually dating. We were kids…neighbors. Grew up together. Always in and out of each other's houses. He was my first and I was his."

"That explains a lot."

Beth turned to look at him. "What does that mean?"

"Nothing…I—"

"Come on, Jack. What did you mean?"

"I promised myself I wouldn't do this." His voice was low and rough, a sexiness to it Beth found both stirring and safe.

"Do what?"

"Perform some kind of psych eval on you. Use our training to figure you out, put you in some neat little box."

"You really think you can do that? Hmm? Better than I can do it for myself?" she challenged him, anger and indignation bubbling below the surface at the implied weakness which she herself knew to be there.

"I have more—"

" _What?_ " she snapped, the old fear returning. The old fear that she was some kind of broken freak who ran away from her problems, hid under a new identity to escape a past she couldn't face. All the things she counselled stalking victims to avoid when she advised them to be strong, take back control of their lives, not to let the stalker win. That thought led naturally to the old fear that she was somehow inauthentic as well as broken, and that the fracture in her life at such a crucial, formative age would forever be her undoing, leaving her incapable of remaining a functional, trusting adult for very long.

"Distance. I have more distance. That's all," Jack assured her.

Beth threw him a sidelong glance. "I thought…I assumed we were close…closer," she amended right at the end, in case she sounded too desperate. Talk of distance had her careering back to her reluctance to start something with him in the first place, since she was, after all was said and done, still his boss.

In this one halting sentence Beth displayed more need for him than Jack felt he had any right to see at this point, and it made his heart swell with gratitude somehow given how protective he knew Beth was of her own heart.

"We are close," he reassured her. "I just mean you can't psychoanalyze yourself, Beth. No one can. Not objectively. Not even Freud managed that."

"So read me," she demanded, taking a harsh sip of her tea. "Give it your best shot, Jack. Show us both what you're made of."

"Stop!" He grasped her mug of tea and eased it out of her angry, clenched fingers before she scalded herself. "Just stop, Beth."

She sagged in defeat. "I'm such a freak," she sighed, tears filling her eyes as she bowed forward to rest her forehead against her knees.

Jack wrapped his arms around her, easing her back against him, pressed his lips to her hairline, as he promised, "You're not a freak. You're a little damaged is all. But you'll get past this and everything will be fine. I promise."

 _TBC..._

 _Any thoughts?_


End file.
